After disappearing from broadcast TV for the last couple years, NBC has picked up the option to carry various ISU competitions – starting with the ladies’ competition at Skate America, live, on Sunday afternoon.
Woo hoo!
twicks, who doesn’t have cable
I haven’t followed figure skating for years. Heck, I haven’t even turned on my TV since practically the last Olympics, but this is good to know. I should maybe get back into it. What’s going on nowadays? Who are the people to watch? Sarah’s little sister?
The last skating I watched was during the last Olympics, but I used to have hundreds of videotapes that dated back to the mid-1980’s with all kinds of professional and amateur competitions/exibitions. I gave 90% of them away several years ago because I just couldn’t keep up anymore.
Thank you so much, twickster.
Although I’m not sure if I want to watch the ladies. US champ Kimmie Meissner not only lost her worlds title last year, she finished 4th.
Since I don’t have cable, I haven’t been able to follow it at all since the Olympics – ABC didn’t air Worlds that year, and they didn’t air anything in the (winter) 2007 season. So I’m totally out of it on who’s who – hope to start getting reoriented this afternoon.
(Luckily, I still get a monthly email newsletter from “International Figure-Skating,” to which I used to subscribe, which mentioned something about NBC, so I checked that out on their site.)
I used to love figure skating, but just don’t see it much anymore. When I do, I always remember a scathing interview with one of the venerable skating coaches where she slammed the “new generation” of skaters (probably everybody since the early 1980’s) for a lack of technical ability, preferring “showiness” to actual expertise. Her prime example was spins- once considered the primary building block skill, nowadays skaters can’t hit them. This gal was saying that a spin must be stationary- the skater shouldn’t drift more than an inch or two.
Sure enough, barely a single skater in a competition can stick a simple spin…
Caroline Zhang’s spin was pretty amazing.
I’ve noticed that Dick Button in particular gets on a kick about something skaters aren’t doing well any more. A few years back, he picked on spins, and as far as I could tell everyone else started picking on spins, too, and lo and behold, the skaters’ spins suddenly got better.
I appreciate good technique, but remembering the oooold days of watching skaters do mandatory figures <yawn> and the tedium involved, I frankly prefer a bit more showmanship if it means more interesting TV. Although I’m sorry that it’s turned into such a heavy emphasis on bigger and bigger jumps – I much prefer watching a beautiful routine skated beautifully and not having to bite my nails the whole time hoping they don’t fall on their jumps.
The one thing I really do not like is the insanity of some of the costumes, not to mention the guys all have the most Dramatic! Hair! ever. There’s a point at which the clothes and hair really do detract from the skating. But that’s just old curmudgeonly me, I fear.
That’s how I feel about quads.
Quads. Does anybody else remember the triple in Ice Castles that blinded that girl? 
Although Suriya Bonali’s backflips were kind of fun…
I just love the name Dick Button.
Is there a Dick Button like the Easy Button?
Why didn’t he go into Porn, he has the name!
DICK BUTTON, DICK BUTTON, its just fun to say!